Help!! Dotty/Grainy Prints Versacamm and Mactac 8300 pro

[calvinh]

I am trying to test printing stickers using mactac 8300 pro vinyl. It's not a preference it's just all i have as the installer left it when he did the install of my versacamm sp300.

In november the prints to that material looked grainy/dotty but i wanted to focus more on other types of printing.

Now i am revisiting the idea and find that not matter what profile, setting i use i still have grainy/dotty print outs. I tried printing on a "gmi wall vinyl" the same graphic and it was "also grainy".

The art is 300dpi designed in xara and exported out as a jpg and then imported into corel x3, contour cut added around it and then exported back out as a eps.

Someone suggested it could be heat settings but i am not familiar with dealing with heat settings. It was never covered with the install and i don't know where to go to learn about "what heat settings to use" for which vinyl so any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

This is an example of the prints. Again i printed on a "mactac 8300 glossy" vinyl using a mactac profile. And i tried printing on some gmi wall vinyl material with a solutions opaque vinyl. I have tried 720 x720, 720 x 1440 and 1080 x 1080 settings and still get the grainy look.

 

[ScotJ]

Put your print heat at around 28deg c, and pre-heat at 27 or so. I'm not familiar with that machine, but thats a good place to start.

 

[threads1]

I'm curious who you bought your machine from?

 

[messmedia]

Well, I am not an expert, nor user of wide format printer (acctually - I am user wannabe :{). hopefully soon), but i've done a lot of research, and I did see samples from VP 300v. Here is the deal:

Your printer uses Epson print heads, a little older in manufacture (there is newer generation), and while it is a good printhead, capable of quality printing, it still has smallest dot size of 5 picolitres, meaning it CAN BE SEEN from smaller distance. (compared to newer heads putted in Mutoh and Mimaki printers, with 3.5 picolitres dot, which makes prints look a little smoother).

Now, U will probbably be more happy with it's printing when it comes to designs that has photographic elements, or clear colors (basic - CMYK), or colors with at least 2 strong basic colors in them (0 100 100 0, 100 100 0 0 and similar). Reason - when a color is mixed from strong percantage of individual, basic colors, it is harder to see mixture-grains. But, when U use light colors, when all ingridients have small percentages, grains MUST be seen (logical: lighter color is achieved by making dots spread, and Your dots are a little bigger, so - there U go).

U should check if Your printer prints better something else, though (0 100 100 0 red color 4 xample), just to be sure if it is true what I said upthere :{).

 

[petepaz]

i have experienced that with my versa camms and we keep the heat at 40 degrees for both printing and drying and it works great
also make sure the area you are printing on is clean when you first open a roll of vinyl the first foot or so can be dusty or have finger prints also when the vinyl sits for a while it gets dust so you may have to go in a foot or so but i believe the heater is the issue
good luck

 

[calvinh]

Hi All,

Thanks everyone that offered assistance with this. First, i found that "8300 mactac" isn't eco solvent based material. It's straight vinyl that can be cut. The installer used it to test print to make sure the printer was printing and said he was leaving it with me. So I assumed it was for my printer to print on not just cut out. I can print on it and the print isn't that bad but i wanted "a smooth look".

Anyway, that still didn't explain why the GMI Wall Vinyl (which is eco solvent) i also tried had a similar grainy look results. So today i first attempted to print a design "i didn't create" to see if it was possibly my art. I used the standard vinyl 1 profile with a preset of "Pre Press" it was grainy. I tried it again changing the Prepress to Max impact. There was a difference but not much. I then decided to try printing using the "GVWG Monomeric Calendar" Setting, High Quality with a Max Impact color management preset and then selected dpi set to GVWG icc profile of 1080x1080 and it was a sharp improvement.

I ran out of the GMI Wall stuff so i pop the box open on some "ESM-GCVP" that roland gave me with my printer. Didn't realize i had this. I printed using the same GVWG Monomeric Calendar Setting as i don't have a "GCVP" one. But where it says "Color Management Presets" I selected "SPEcoMHGCVP_v720x7620.icc, Selected High Quality and it printed fine. I didn't try 1080x1080 as 720 was passable for me.

I believe that i will have to find the "right materials" and brands for my machine as i know with my laser printer i have some papers i print on that look better than others.

I also decided to print a color pallet file i had from corel so i could see all the different colors and which looked grainy or smooth. This will help when i design.

Thank you all for your help. I'm not a novice with pc or profiles i know to look for the profile for each material i use but it's been frustrating in that everything i do search for there hasn't been a profile for. (

Mesamedia: What you say about the light colors vs the dark colors make sense looking at the color pallet i printed. I can get around it a bit when i design by just avoiding those colors. When i do print "photo" type stuff like a fathead i didn't notice the dotty look so i think clipart is when i have to be mindful of the colors i choose.

Thread1: I purchased my machine from "imprintables warehouse". They focus mainly on the t-shirt side of things so i'm basically left to figure out the sign stuff on my own. I probably will just take a class on using my machine, etc. so i can know exactly what i am doing on the sign side. I already knew how to do shirts but sign stuff is a learning process.

 

[Vinylman]

Calvinh:

one of the things I have found to be critical in getting the best quality from any given print material, is to experiment with the heat settings. Especially the front [or after the print heads} heater. I keep mine set as "LOW" as possible to allow the ink to flow before setting. If you have the heat to high, the inks kick off or set to fast, and this can create the type of grainy effect you have experienced.

Hope that is helpful.

 

[calvinh]

i'l play with heat settings tommorrow. Thanks

 

[Digitall]

Another factor is humidity. if your room is too dry your prints can be grainy. We run a humidifier for this reason. 2x on heat settings also

 

[JAMESGANGRACING]

i was told to put my heat settings on my sp540v at 108 & 112
when i bought it. will lowering those settings help the "dottyness"
go away? I print a lot of race car wraps and use the high speed setting mostly,but even on standard there is a lot of dotty look.

 

[petepaz]

the high speed is going to be a little grainy
at least that has been my experience

 

[calvinh]

Hi All,

Ok wanted to come back and let you guys know that I have sorta solved my grainy/dotty issues.

I never got to plan with my heat settings as i decided to first "upgrade to the lastest" version of versaworks as i had 2.6.1 installed. So figured that could be part of my problem.

After "upgraded" i couldn't print anything to versacamm. A lot of surfing on various forums i saw a someone had posted about the new version not liking corel draw exported 'jpg' files. Turns out it doesn't like "anything corel draw" exported as eps. To me a whole day to figure a work around. I have illustrator so i tried using that to make a contour line, etc. and was able to sent stuff that was eps to the printer.

To make a long story short I've spent the last 2 days dealing with software issues. I made a breakthrough yesterday and so i printed 2 files that i show below. One was using the profile that is specifically for the vinyl i was using (GVCP) and the other i forgot to select the "profile" so it printed at the normal "Generic Vinyl Setting".

So you can see it's a big difference.

If you look closely at the "hair for the girl" you see it looks like dots i figure it's how the ink mix to make yellow but her dress, the balloons, etc. are all sorta smooth. She was printed at "standard" quality. I can live with this print. Before i was getting closer to the boy but a little less grainy.

Anyway, thank you all for you help. I will play with heat setting now to see if i can get even better results for the girl.

 

[freedommailing]

One sultion for dotty prints. When I use EPS from Adobe Illustrator with my versacamm I get dotty patterns. Same thing happens with Corel UNLESS I click on "use ICC profile" in the EPS export screen. Then my prints come out sharp! Adobe Illustrator - for some reason - doesn't appear to have that setting. My graphic designer couldn't believe Corel trumped Adobe on that but it appears to have done just that. Another option if using Adobe though appears to be that you can produce in Illustrator and then open in Photoshop and save as a JPEG and apply the ICC profile in the JPEG export screen. Then the Versacamm rip software will accept the JPEG and print it well. At least it did on the one small test I just did. Hope that helps.